Deliver Us from Evil

Sometimes I wish we were all Baptists. It would be so much easier to know our identity as believers if we were. On the one hand, we would have the Bible as the unerring Word of God. On the other, we’d have Jesus Christ as our Lord and personal savior. And that would be all we’d need to know.

Unfortunately Catholicism is not that simple. We Catholics inherit a faith tradition that may be the most complicated in human history. To maintain our Catholic identity, we must continually absorb and integrate a bewildering array of customs, symbols, teachings, heroes, documents, histories and institutions. If Baptists enjoy Christianity’s “happy meal,” we Catholics, for better or worse, face faith's “all-you-can-eat buffet.”

Two events this week reflected the challenge this buffet poses. From the media’s perspective, the events are entirely unrelated. Yet Catholics are supposed to connect the dots and piece together a picture others may not see.

L. Paul Bremer handed over the official reins of power to Iraqi Prime Minister Ilyad Allawi. And Boston’s Archbishop Sean O’Malley arrived in Rome to celebrate his 60^th birthday by accepting the pallium—a high Vatican honor—from Pope John Paul II.

The link between these events surfaced when O’Malley granted an interview to the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. He answered questions on topics ranging from the Vatican’s slow pace in resolving abuse cases against priests to his opposition to same-sex marriage. He gave notice of his intention to speak out on other political issues, and admitted that Americans often see issues differently.

To this point, no surprises. But in my view, what he said next should be carved in stone and planted in front of every Catholic Church. Speaking of the tension between the Catholic Church and American culture, he said:

“And it’s complicated, too, by the fact that neither political party really embodies the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. So that creates a certain tension.”

For many Catholics, there are two surprises here. First, many Catholics still don’t know the church has a social doctrine—or else they have no clue what’s in it. Second, most Americans (including Catholics) tend to think of social issues in simple “two-party-system” terms—namely, liberal vs. conservative. The plain if troublesome truth is that Catholic social doctrine is neither liberal nor conservative—or else it is both. Either way, it doesn’t fit the simple categories of American politics. And that challenges Catholics everywhere to develop a more complex and sophisticated view of current social issues than we typically get from either the media or our political leaders.

The “transfer of sovereignty” in Iraq is a perfect case in point. Anyone paying attention knows the talk of “sovereignty” is mostly wishful thinking so far. The “sovereign,” according to my dictionary, is the independent authority that governs a country. And government cannot govern unless it has a monopoly over the use of physical force in that country. Since the 160,000 US-led troops in Iraq are not under the prime minister’s command, his government is “sovereign” only in some new, sound-bite-era sense.

So even while Iraq moves toward new elections and a secure social order and the kind of independence that will earn it the label “sovereign state,” the US remains as an occupation force still shaping the fate of “post-war” Iraq.

And here is where Catholicism’s complexity comes in. When it comes to war and peace, there is a spectrum of catholic positions, but the position that is most supportive of armed intervention is the Just War theory. That theory goes far beyond the simplistic quesiton “Is this war justified?” to pose tough standards for justifying both (1) the decision to go to war and (2) the conduct of war. The last of these standards may be the toughest to understand, to apply, and to measure. It is called “proportionality,’ and it requires that the good a war accomplishes must always outweigh the harm it causes.

With the new government in Iraq, it would be so temptingly simple to say, “We won, Saddam's out, new government is in, case closed.” But Catholic tradition is tougher than that.

In any war, the principle of proportionality can become a moral time bomb, ticking away as the destruction mounts higher and higher, always threatening to eventually overtake the good aims that justified going to war in the first place. In Iraq, the ticking has become doubly loud. Not only has the destruction kept mounting well beyond the “mission accomplished” of spring 2003, but the mission itself—the good we expected from the war—has been steadily shrinking. No link between Saddam and Osama. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear capacity. No open arms welcoming liberators. No easy exit. No oil profits paying the war’s cost. No sign of better Christian-Muslim relations, or better Israeli-Palestinian relations.

And despite any talk of sovereignty, Iraq remains a country permanently altered by the US-led invasion. The moral responsibility for the consequences of war rest, in just war theory, with those who choose to go to war—so the responsibility is ours, since even the new provisional government merely inherits what our armies have created. L. Paul Bremer confirmed this just before leaving by issuing a massive “flurry” of executive orders that now stand as Iraqi law. As the head of Washington’s Kurds Institute said, “What does sovereignty mean if you have a set of laws that you have to follow regardless of who is in charge?”

The new government will be responsible for preparing new elections and for answering some tough questions about Iraq’s future: will it be an Islamic state or a secular one? How much power will the Shi’ite majority have? What will be the Kurds’ fate?

But Americans will continue to tally the damage done: the hundreds of American and thousands of Iraqi troops, the mounting toll of civilian deaths (17,000 by one recent count), the physical destruction in Iraq, the social disorder and lawlessness, the growing isolation of the US and the damage to its alliances, the weakening of our credibility in intelligence, the loss of moral reputation due to torture—all this is part of America’s moral responsibility for invading Iraq.

The victory was quick, but has proven hollow, and the damage (to retrieve a once-retired wartime cliché) goes on like a tunnel with no light at the end.

Our leaders did not see this coming, because they saw the conflict in simple terms of good and evil, just cause and holy war, threat and preemption. A more complex standard like the just war theory might have prevented the rash rush to war, but that was too tough a challenge, and simpler minds prevailed. Maybe we’ll do better next time?

Simple answers to complex questions seldom work for long. As hard as it may be to absorb the complexity of Catholic faith, I guess perhaps it’s just as well we’re not all Baptists—even if it means we end up having to say, “Wait a minute! It’s not that simple.”

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com